Gift Giving

If you go to church you will invariably hear the sermon about how consumer gift buying, and shopping is not what Christmas is all about.  The attempt is to make you feel shallow about your shopping at this time of year.  Get a life, preacher!  Maybe the preacher simply does not like to shop.  That is hardly the doorway to holiness.  Shopping is about giving.  You have to shop first, to give.  So I try to help make people feel better about Christmas shopping, or Purim shopping for that matter.  I advertise what I like to get.  There have to be getters, no?  The joy of giving is in knowing that you bought just the right thing to make the getter equally joyful!  How will you know what to buy if the receiver does not tell you what they like?  If the giver buys something that the getter does not like, then the getter has to act nice and fake gratefulness.  It is bad form to say you are disappointed in some gift you receive.  The getter now lives a fake life to make the giver feel better.  So now the getter has to lie.  Lying is a sin.  Sinners burn.  Plus, lies compound.  Next year the getter receives the same gift and lies again.  Being nice again means more burning.  I don't want to burn.  So I preach what I want for Christmas.  This is not shallow preaching.  Just trying not to burn.  Eighteen shopping days left.